Our Universe Spirit Centers and Universe Embassies

(Please Note: Most of this event and other information below has evolved as the organization has evolved over the years. These web pages help to show the current activities and some of the history of the original organization (Integrative Spirituality,) and how it has evolved into the Universe Spirit organization and the Evolution Spirituality movement. The educational, advocacy and other services of Universe Spirit and Evolution Spirituality are now delivered in courses at our Universe College, on this website and at our Universe Spirit centers and our Universe Embassies.)

The following sections can be found on this page. They are not active links just subject headings.

• The Center(s) of Universe Spirit Organization
• Why our Main San Francisco Center is o­n a Large Boat
• Schedule of Typical Events and Services at the San Francisco Center
• Directions to our San Francisco Center
• Future Locations

The Center(s) of the Universe Spirit Non-profit organization

We now call our San Francisco Universe Spirit center and all of our centers Universe Embassies. We call them that because they are beacons of light and educational, training and service centers for issues in the areas of:

a.) universe evolution (on how it's principles can help planetary evolution,)

b.) spirituality and religion (that is healthy, inclusive, universe-scaled and universal --- we call this Evolution Spirituality) and

c.) learning how to become responsible, informed and effective Universe Citizens. 

Our Universe Spirit Centers and Universe Embassies serve the same functions for our members as a temple, church or mosque would serve for members (congregations,) of other religions.

Our San Francisco Universe Spirit center and Universe Embassy is amazingly beautiful and unique. It is floating in the San Francisco bay surrounded by water and 360 degree views. It is an astounding place for all types of educational and spiritual events.

In addition to the natural splendor of amazing views of the San Francisco bay, staying at or visiting our center is a unique educational and spiritual experience in itself. The new spiritual center has a worship and meditation chapel, 3, two-person single bed overnight or retreat rooms o­ne with private bath and o­ne with a shared bath, two salon type spiritual presentation/discussion event rooms, a food preparation area and two outdoor deck areas (one with a barbeque and seating for 20.) It also has wireless and networked internet and a complete audio visual presentation system (52 in flat screen with 7.1 surround sound) for power point educational spiritual presentations, videos, CDs, tapes etc.

Our center currently serves as our:

1. Spiritual research center on the role of progressive evolution (Evolution Spirituality,) as it relates to improving the future of personalized Universe Spirit,
2. Spiritual teacher training seminary and monastery,(for more about our minister/spiritual teacher training click here.)
3. Retreat center for members and visitors,
4. Center for delivering spiritual and educational services to our members,
5. Parsonage or housing for our or guest spiritual and occasional secular teachers, visiting staff and, occasionally visiting ministers and/or spiritual teachers from other denominations,
6. Production studio for creating Evolution Spirituality educational materials, videos as well as new spiritual content for our website and for our spiritual outreach,
7. International administrative offices and website management headquarters for the organization,
8. Event center for spiritual outreach to the local San Francisco bay area community as well as special spiritual outreach to the San Francisco marine community.
9. A vehicle and tool that can respond to help our community in an-eco, natural or other disaster or emergency with generators, water purification systems cooking facilities and emergency housing.

Why our Center is o­n a Boat

There are 3 main reasons why our San Francisco Universe Spirit center is on a boat:

1. It was practical for a spiritual organization setting up our first center in a new area where real estate prices and rental costs are among the highest in the US, particularly in San Francisco and Marin County. We were able to secure an equity lease on the boat from another non profit organization at a fraction of the lease or purchase price of any other appropriate property in the area that we could find.
2. It was humbly cost appropriate in size for a new spiritual spiritual movement and organization setting up a new local community in the San Francisco area. 
3. It has proven highly effective for forwarding our mission. Our congregation members and guests love to come to the natural space of the boat. Sea birds, seals and rising and falling tides are our near constant companions. From the very beginning almost every event we have on the boat has been full to capacity. And, close by are additional reasonably priced spaces for larger events. It is also effective because of its seclusion on the far end of a locked 200 yard long dock and its ability to create even more spiritual seclusion when it leaves. This seclusion supports spiritual research and retreats as well as the isolated monastic qualities ideal for reflection, ministerial training and meditative worship.
4. It reflects our organization’s spiritual values. The original field of space created by the Ultimate Reality from which all things were able to come into being and in which all things currently exist has an inherent sacredness to us beyond its essential value in that nothing could exist without it. Because of this special value, things that closely reflect its spiritual qualities also have a special sacred meaning and importance to us --- things such as the oceans of our planet and outer space.
5. It is in harmony with our ideas of emergency preparedness for the probable effects of catastrophic climate destabilization. We hold that it is wise to prepare for a likely worst regarding climate destabilization then forget about those preparations and then work wholehearted to create the best climate re-stabilization outcome.

Much as the original space field is, the oceans and outer space are vital life birthing and life sustaining and nurturing environments. The oceans are the birthplace and sustenance of our planet’s organic life and outer space is the place of birthing and sustenance for the galaxies, planets and universes. Because we believe that the oceans of earth possess many of the important qualities of the original space field and the Infinite one that created that space field, it is our intent to honor the Infinite and the original space field of all creation by building our first physical spiritual, worship and administrative centers and theological seminaries/monasteries or retreat centers on the ocean or on the water near major cities.

As we grow or when building on the oceans or water is not practical, our spiritual centers will always contain elements that reflect and remind us of the sacredness of these places and the need to preserve and protect both the oceans and outer space as the universal life sustaining commons for all generations and all species. Additionally, we believe that the conditions of living on the water or eventually in outer space cultivate being prepared, adaptability to rapidly changing conditions, being in the present and, prepare us to serve spiritually in sometimes difficult conditions…

Click here for photos of our floating center.

Schedule of Spiritual Services at the Center

This schedule will be fairly typical for the year:

 

Universe Day Each January 1st

To Learn more about Universe Day, click here.

Bi or Tri Weekly Integrative Relationship Meditation Sessions

Every 3rd Wednesday beginning at 6:30 pm sharp you can re-energize spiritually at one of the most naturally beautiful meditation/worship spaces in all of California. Each Wednesday at the Universe Spirit (our floating Spiritual Center in San Rafael) we have a 30-40 minute Integrative Relationship Meditation (IRM) session followed by 20 minutes of meeting and socializing. (Our organization is the original creator of this powerful new type of meditation system.)

It’s a great way to support and re-energize your work week and keep centered in embodied consciousness and spirit.

Our new integrative relationship meditation is easy enough to be done by new meditators with just 2-3 minutes instruction. It is also exciting and different enough to make long term meditators know that they have truly experienced a positive new surge in their meditation experience and growth.

Derived from an integrated core of essential eastern and western spiritual and mystical traditions each complete relationship meditation session consists of four, 6-8 minute mini meditations followed by about 20 minutes of socialization, which takes advantage of the special relationship awareness created.

The four different meditation styles are done in a sequence that creates this unique relationship focused meditation experience. In this integral and evolutionary meditation experience you connect with and meet others at deep, authentic levels of pure Essence while connecting to the Ultimate Reality that includes us all. This naturally facilitates an experience in individual and group intimacy.

These free meditation experiences have been so moving to participants that the after-meditation socializing has been hard to end. And no, it is not just because floating while meditating o­n a boat with amazing 270 degree views of the San Francisco Bay is so nurturing and different!

So, step away from your normal day-to-day land based experiences. Take a mini-pilgrimage and come aboard to experience our Integrative Relationship Meditation at our floating temple, monastery and sanctuary.

What to Bring

Bring snacks if you want to share something after the meditation. We do have pillows, but feel free to bring your favorite meditation cushion. We also have benches for sitting meditation.

What to expect: Our creative Wednesday meditation/worship sessions integrate and rotate traditional meditation styles (Zen, Buddhist, Christian, Sufi, and mystical,) with modern forms of meditation such as guided visualization and affirmations etc. You can expect peacefulness as the sound and motion of gentle waves caress the floating sanctuary as you meditate. You can expect a renewed and enhanced positive spiritual perspective and insight when you leave these omni-denominational spiritual meditations!

Each session is led at the beginning and at the end by o­ne of our qualified Life and Spirit facilitators so that everyone will feel comfortable with any new meditation practices that they may not know. Time and guidance will be provided for silent contemplative worship for those individuals who also believe in a personalized form of Ultimate Reality and want to use part of this meditation/worship time for silent direct spiritual connection to that personalized Ultimate Reality.

After the 30-40 minute meditation/worship if you would like to stay, there will be about 20 minutes of time to socialize and have some tea o­n the upper fly bridge of the Universe Spirit. Here you can connect with other regular attendees, community members and visitors.

Where: For photos of our spiritual center, the mediation/worship sanctuary or for directions please go to the About Us link at the top of each page of our website and select the locations link.

If you are going to join us for a 7 pm Wednesday session, please email or call us before you come! Occasionally, our floating spiritual center is away from our San Rafael home port doing special events or is undergoing unexpected repairs. Feel free to bring your favorite meditation cushion. We also have benches for sitting meditation.

Free: These sessions are free to the public and any donations you chose to provide to help cover tea and maintenance costs are deeply appreciated. To see our current upcoming events monthly calendar, look to the left in the Event Calendar box.

Celebration of Life Events

This is our quarterly community spiritual service, meditation, gratitude worship, fun and music celebration! All Celebration of Life events are held on the water at our floating spiritual center called the Universe Spirit and presided over by our Life and Spirit facilitators. Together on board the Universe Spirit, we will celebrate the mystery of our shared spiritual lives, honor our intentions for a better world, and nourish our spirits, minds and bodies.

Our Celebration of Life event and community potluck is usually at 5:30 – 8 PM. Bring a potluck dish to share if you wish. Each service differs somewhat based upon what the Life and Spirit facilitator chooses to include for his educational section (spiritual education o­n Ultimate Reality or how to lead an effective spiritual life in the day to day world etc.,) or if they choose to use audio visual equipment in our sanctuary. Each service either starts or concludes with a meditation or gratitude/worship affirmation in our sanctuary area.

At this event community members also get a chance to share their spiritual successes and challenges and ask questions. There is also a dedicated portion of the service for the sharing of some art form by community members. In the past, we have had member artistic contributions such as music or song, theater, poetry, dance and a lot of spiritual comedy.

For Celebration of Life Events you must RSVP to manage@universespirit.org to find where our floating spiritual center is docked. All events in the SF bay are subject to limited seating, weather conditions or other nautical mechanical problems. So, always RSVP first so we can contact you if there is room or an event schedule change.

Celebration of Life Events:

Please RSVP tomanage@universespirit.org if you plan o­n attending and/or inviting someone so that we can set up the seating-limited space accordingly.

 

If you can't make it to o­ne of our local events, check out our o­nline Universe Spirit courses by clicking here.

Spiritual Salons

Each month we also have a spiritual salon at our floating spiritual center in San Rafael.  Each o­ne is held from 6:30 - 8 PM and is conducted by o­ne of our Life and Spirit facilitators. Sometimes we invite a spiritual teacher/minister from some other denomination to do a presentation for our community. Evenings usually begin with a meditation.

Audio, video and film are wonderful mediums for the dissemination of thought-provoking spiritual information, messages and values; and we particularly engage this dimension of our spiritual community using short films distributed through Spiritual Cinema.

Our spiritual salons are also accommodating of educational discussions and reading group discussions. In all the work we do regarding these educational spiritual salons, we attempt to make living a spiritual life practical and accessible for our community. Each educational salon service either starts or concludes with a meditation and gratitude/worship affirmation in our sanctuary area.

For Spiritual Salon events on our calendar you must RSVP to manage@universespirit.org to get directions to find where our floating spiritual center is docked. All events at locations other than San Raphael in the SF bay are subject to weather conditions or other nautical mechanical problems. So, always RSVP first so we can contact you if there is an event schedule change

For photos of some other kinds of past events we have had, click here.

Our Universe Spirit Classes:

Our Online Classes: You can begin our online classes at the new Universe College immediately. Click here to go to the Online Universe College.

Our local classes, usually held from 1-4 PM, are designed to help individual seekers expand their own personal spirituality, through transformative direct experience with the Ultimate Reality. We particularly help participants understand and work with the coalescence of the life-affirming and embodied panentheistic (Ultimate Reality is simultaneously both within and outside of the physical universe,) wisdom of the integral spirituality, eco-spirituality and women’s spirituality movements. We do this in order to help individuals work on synthesizing completely new potentials for personal spiritual transformation, global wholeness and sustainability.

All of our classes offer an open source, collaborative process at the cutting edge of humanity’s spiritual wisdom traditions. They are both integral and integrative, in that they include the most effective, safe and universally applicable spiritual wisdom from all of humanity’s spiritual heritage while at the same time striving to transcend the ineffective, inapplicable or pathological elements of that same spiritual heritage.

Schedule of Universe Spirit Classes:

Please email us at:manage@universespirit.org to RSVP or receive more information. If you plan o­n attending and/or inviting someone do call (415-332-2301) or email so that we can set up the seating-limited space accordingly.

If you can't make it to one of our local events, check out our o­nline Universe Spirit courses by clicking here.

Special Worship Sessions for the Divine Feminine

At Integrative Spirituality, we also hold that a renewed envisioning of Ultimate Reality as the Divine Feminine, replete with all qualities and aspects, will further assist us in realizing paradoxical o­neness—what some see as a triune Godhead with aspects encompassing the transcendent, immanent and evolutionary absolute states of spiritual consciousness. This opening to a fuller acceptance of life’s challenges and the wonders of Ultimate Reality  is o­nly possible through the healing work of loving what we have disowned. This vital spiritual and psychological shadow work, we hope, will involve and continue to be informed by the women’s spirituality, eco-spirituality and integral movements.

We affirm and believe that the effective implementation of an integrative and integral spirituality will help facilitate the creation of a just, sustainable and equitable world. Universe Spirit will do this in part by affirmatively and actively supporting the recognition, re-assent and resacralization of the Divine Female/Divine Feminine in integral spiritual practice and life.

A spiritual reconnection to the Divine Feminine will, we believe, then organically grow to support the rebalancing of the Divine Feminine with the Divine Masculine. o­nce the paradoxical o­neness of the Divine is envisioned in this way, a more robust, inclusive expression of creativity, joy, peace and love will be possible.

We have also dedicated ourselves to also doing the work of expanding the recognition of and honoring the Divine Female because She, (often also called Goddess or Divine Mother,) is often neglected, suppressed, denied, rejected, marginalized and psychologically repressed throughout much of the world in the spiritual and religious traditions. Her denigration and the ignoring of Her qualities has been the root cause of myriad crises—spiritual, environmental, physical and social—because without a valuing of the Feminine/Female face of the Divine, humanity has in many contexts stripped itself of the potential for fullest wholeness and oneness the Divine affords. By embracing Her within the larger context of our spiritual worship, we also can embrace truly more of ourselves, each other, and our beloved Earth. Embracing Her, we also reconnect to the source of embodied wisdom; wisdom that has been denied expression given the tendency toward pathological dualities and patriarchal limitations within so many of humanity’s social structures.

To honor this new spiritual perspective, we will soon add additional open-to-the public Divine Feminine worship services to our calendar. These ceremonies are conducted by our o­ne of our Life and Spirit facilitators.

N.B. You must RSVP to manage@universespirit.org and a link will be sent to you with dock directions and additional information. All events in the SF Bay Area are subject to seating limitations, weather conditions or other nautical mechanical problems. So, always RSVP so we can contact you if there is a location or schedule change.

If you can't make it to o­ne of our local events, check out our o­nline Universe College Universe Spirituality courses by clicking here.

World Spirituality Day

World Spirituality Day occurs each December 31st and is o­ne of our major spiritual holidays. It is an omni-denominational spiritual celebration dedicated to renewing o­ne’s most profound and transformational direct spiritual experiences. It is conducted by o­ne or more of our Life and Spirit facilitators and each service either starts or concludes with a spiritual meditation and gratitude/worship affirmation in our sanctuary area. In these services our spiritual community members and guests get a chance to share their most profound spiritual experiences and successes with each other in rotating sessions.

Children's Events

In our growing new spiritual community and as the need arises for children’s spiritual education we hope that eventually each month o­n the first or third Thursday during the late afternoon after school spiritual instruction for children and young adults will take place.

Directions to Our Center

Before you visit: Please note that in order to visit the center you must be a confirmed guest to an event or cruise, be enrolled in a class, have a scheduled appointment or come at a regularly scheduled public spiritual service or meditation/worship time. The reasons for this call-and-confirm-before-you- come policy is simple. Sometimes the center is shut down for mechanical repairs, off the dock o­n an event cruise, at dry-dock for hull work or, there is a private retreat, service, class or special staff training going o­n and the center is closed temporarily to the public. If you visit at a time that is outside of these parameters and you have not called and confirmed that we are open for the public, you will be invited to come back at another time. To call and confirm that we are at the dock, open for the public and it is ok to come to the center call 415-332-2301 and speak with o­ne of our staff.

If you have a car GPS:

Enter 110 Loch Lomond Dr. San Rafael, California. (This is the address of the Loch Lomond Marina where the center's boat temporarily is berthed.) Once you get to Loch Lomond Marina for the  parking lot and park there closest to the Dock B entrance. Next, call 415-332-2301 or secondly 775-3383578 and let us know you are here so we can come out and open the security gate for you. You can also go to the marina office during normal business hours and check out a pass key. Once you have passed the dock B security gate walk down dock B to the very end about 125 yards. The new Universe Spirit Boat is the largest boat at the very end of the B dock. (We are in the process of changing the boat's name so it still might be called the Advventura.) Those final instructions will get you down to the correct dock and location of our boat.

If you do not have a car GPS:

Heading North o­n HWY 101 from San Francisco take the San Rafael Central Exit. Turn Right onto the first street and follow it several miles past the Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to 110 Loch Lomond Dr. (This is the address of the Loch Lomond Marina where the boat is.)

Once you get to Loch Lomond Marina for the  parking lot and park there closest to the Dock B entrance. Next, call 415-332-2301 or secondly 775-3383578 and let us know you are here so we can come out and open the security gate for you. You can also go to the marina office during normal business hours and check out a pass key. Once you have passed the dock B security gate walk down dock B to the very end. The new Universe Spirit Boat called the Universe Spirit is the largest boat at the very end of the dock.

You will be walking down through what feels like a 125 yard 'tunnel' of sailboats. The Universe Spirit is the last well lit boat all the way to the end of the B dock. You can't miss it; a 2 level, 74 foot white Hatteras power boat with black trim.

Future Locations

We are currently working o­n plan for setting up new centers around the world. If you are interested in helping us do this, please email us and let us know your ideas.

Update: We have grown considerably over the last 7 years. Our intentions, (which we invite you to join in,) are to find a new larger center for our growing community. We ask for your intentional and physical support in this search for this new sacred space. Ideally, we would like to find some individual or corporation, which understands our important mission and would donate part or all of this new center to us as our first center was donated.

To learn more about our organization, click here.

About Our New Universe Name and Organizational Legal Structure

Universe Spirit is a DBA (doing business as name,) of Integrative Spirituality. In 2007 the legal predecessor organization that owns the Universe Spirit DBA name (Integrative Spirituality,) was wholly transferred to a Colorado 5013(c) non profit organization called Factnet. As such Universe Spirit now is a part of Factnet as one of its DBA's and is also a non-profit 501c3 organization that can receive donations.